


The Ark - Missing Scene

by coolbreeze1



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreeze1/pseuds/coolbreeze1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene between when John gets into the shuttle in an attempt to land it, and when he actually lands it. Well, more like crashes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ark - Missing Scene

“Initiating separation maneuver in three, two, one, mark.”

Sheppard punched the button on the console in front of him, then braced himself for the jolt of the ship throwing itself away from the moon. He glanced around at the sudden buzz of an alarm, searching the unfamiliar dash in front of him. The fact that he was still inside the moon was answer enough, however. He blinked his eyes, pushing back the headache that had been pounding in his temples since…what was it Rodney had called that guy? Since “Sammy Suicide” had tried to kill them all and nearly succeeded.

“Separation is negative. Switching to back-up.”

The plan was a long-shot anyway. He’d known that going in. The space shuttle was hundreds of years old, fuel levels were questionable, and despite what he liked to tell McKay about being able to fly anything…well, he was starting to question whether or not he could fly an _entire_ moon.

He spun in his seat, eyes raking the control panel. There had to be another option—something else he could try. He flipped at the switches in front of him.

“Disengage,” he ordered. The consoles remained stubbornly unlit and he banged his fist into it. “Come on!”

Alarms blared as the ship shuddered again worse than before. He could see the red-orange glare out of the cockpit window as the bottom edge of the moon began to scrape along the atmosphere, and a line of sweat broke out across his forehead.

“Dammit!” He looked up, but the jumper was nowhere in sight. Hopefully it was well away from the disintegrating moon. “The bolts will not work. I repeat: the explosive bolts will not fire. Unable to separate ship. I don’t know if you can hear me but it looks like I’m going to have to ride this one down.”

The ship jerked again and he gripped the controls, as if they would be of any help. Red lights flashed across the dashboard—the universal sign of _Oh, shit._ He grinned as the thought flashed through his mind, and then the moon heaved against the atmosphere and a car-sized boulder broke off, hurtling toward the cockpit bubble and missing him by no more than a couple of feet.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Neither McKay nor anyone else in the jumper had responded to his message about the damaged explosive bolts and he wondered if they’d heard him. He hoped they had, that they would at least know why he’d burned up inside the moon. He strained his ears, listening for a response back and hearing nothing but static.

“Think, John. Think.”

He was trapped. The ship was attached to the moon base, and the bolts that should have thrown him safely away from the hunk of rock were busted. No use flipping ineffectual switches. The rock walls around him were crumbling faster than he had time to react, and he flinched as fiery chunks flung toward him. He could almost make out the planet below, but the hazy red of burning atmosphere obscured everything.

If he was lucky, one of those crumbling moon rocks would hit something vital on the ship and he’d die fast. Ronon wanted to die fighting, but if John had to pick, flying wasn’t such a bad way either. The metal framework of the space station collapsed around him, twisting under the heat of re-entry. If only he could force an explosion…

Fuel.

Lorne had checked the shuttle’s supply and said there wasn’t any fuel, but maybe there just wasn’t much. John wouldn’t need a lot. Just enough to start an explosion near the rear of the ship. It was even more of a long-shot than landing the space shuttle in the first place. He scanned his console again, pulling up a schematic of the ship. There were two fuel ports on each side: the main ones were on the underside of the shuttle directly below the cockpit, but the secondary ports were near the rear. Not far from the bolts anchoring this flying death trap to the base.

He flipped another set of switches, sending the alarms into a howling frenzy as the secondary ports opened. He had no way of knowing if they were actually opening, or if they had any fuel whatsoever in them. But all he needed was enough fuel to ignite close enough to the explosive bolts to set them off. The chance of success was so slim, it almost wasn’t even worth attempting.

The ship rattled and vibrated, and John’s vision blurred. Sweat dripped down his face and he clenched every muscle in his body. This was it. He couldn’t even see his hands in front of him, let alone figure out what the read-outs and displays might be trying to tell him. Over the roar of the moon breaking up around him, he heard a faint beep, and he closed his eyes—

The jolt threw him into the back of his chair and he felt his head bang against his helmet. A flash of white followed the burst of pain in his skull, but it took another moment for him to realize he was still alive, still breathing. He could feel the acceleration pressing his body into the seat and he forced his eyes open.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed out. It had worked—maybe. Something had exploded and thrown him free of the base. The fuel. The bolts. The moon. Whatever.

John saw black skies above, then a wave of white and red and yellow washed over the cockpit window. It took another second for him to realize he’d closed his eyes again, and he opened them to see blue skies and pale land. He reached for the controls with arms that felt like they weighed two tons each.

He could see the ground growing rapidly larger below him even with the constant shuddering vibrations blurring his vision. Alarms were blaring again, louder than before, as the ship hurtled toward land. He pulled back on the control stick in a vain attempt to bring the nose up a little, but he’d had little to no fuel to begin with.

Control was a lie. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the stick, to break the illusion that he was doing anything to land this thing.

At least there were no trees. He caught enough of a glimpse of the surrounding area to see he was crashing into a desert before the bottom of the ship suddenly hit ground, skidding across sand. John felt his body fling forward at the impact, and he stared at the blinking red _oh, shit_ lights rushing up toward his face before his helmet slammed into the control console.

* * *

John groaned, still feeling the rattling, jerking crash in his bones. He was laying across the console, his face pressed up against the glass of his helmet and one arm dangling at his side. He had no intention of moving. He forced open his eyes and saw that the lights on the dash had all gone out.

No power.

 _Teyla._

The thought of her still locked up and demolecularized in that damn box spurred him to push himself up into a sitting position. There was no power to the cockpit, but did that mean the Wraith storage device was also out of power? The ship was utterly still. He had just enough energy to push himself into the back of his chair, and then the tension in his muscles flooded out of him and he collapsed.

The world outside was bright and sunny, giving no indication that it had taken any notice of the moon suddenly dropping from orbit to land in a tangled burning heap of molten rock and metal. John sucked in a breath, feeling his chest tightened against already swelling bruises. Far above, he saw a dark speck fly past. The jumper.

“That’s one week’s pay you owe me, Rodney.”

McKay’s response sound tinny and small through the radio, but the relief was tangible. “Well, technically, I didn’t take that bet.”

“Hang tight, sir. We’re on our way.”

John nodded at Lorne’s assurance then cringed. “Take your time, Major,” he answered. He yanked on the bottom of his helmet, pushing up the glass. He wanted to wipe away the sweat now crawling across his face and neck, but his arm dropped heavily to his side.

“Take your time,” he repeated. He’d crashed before, but this one took the cake. He started to tremble at the sudden realization that he was alive. He’d brought the shuttle down and survived. Something on the far side of the console lit up, it’s little bulb bright and green. So not all power was gone—maybe Teyla was still floating somewhere in that storage device after all.

He could hear voices talking to him again—Rodney, Ronon, Lorne, Beckett. Asking him what had happened, if he was alright, if Teyla was alright. He closed his eyes, his headache growing until it encompassed his entire head and spread down his neck, into his chest and stomach and legs. The ship wasn’t moving, he was certain of that, but it felt like he was still hurtling through space, still jerking and rumbling, squeezed between the physical forces of the universe.

“Colonel?”

“Sheppard, you okay?”

“Answer us, dammit.”

The voices grew louder in his ear. His eyes had slid closed without him realizing it, and he knew he needed to get up and check on Teyla, open the hatch for his team to get in and take care of the Wraith storage people. He knew it, yet his body had other plans, and it sagged deeper into the chair.

“That was a hell of a landing. I can’t believe the ship’s still intact.”

“Colonel Sheppard?”

“The power is holding steady on this thing. We shouldn’t wait too long to start beaming these people out of here.”

“John, where are you?”

“Doc, up here!”

The voices weren’t just in his ear anymore. He heard the footsteps pounding against the ladder that led up to the cockpit but still flinched in surprise when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Easy, lad. It’s just me.”

John forced his eyes open and stared up at the doctor. Beckett had managed to squeeze into the small cockpit area and was staring down at him in open concern.

“Teyla!” he said, jerking upright.

“Whoa!” Beckett pressed his hands against John’s shoulders, forcing him back into the seat. John groaned at the stiffening pain. “Don’t move. You just took a hell of hard ride.”

“Doc!” Ronon’s voice called up from below, and John turned his head toward the sound.

“I’m checking him over now. You sit down like I told you to, and put that sling back on.”

John heard an indistinct rumbling and smiled. He sat immobile—not that he could have moved if he’d wanted to—while Beckett checked him over, grimacing at the flash of a penlight in his eyes. When the doctor pushed against his chest, he couldn’t help the whimpering moan that slipped past his lips.

Beckett tsked and tutted as he went through his exam but otherwise seemed to conclude John would survive. The adrenaline rush of crashing and finding himself alive was starting to wear off, though John wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. The shaking sensation was ebbing, replaced with a profound lethargy.

“Don’t move,” Beckett ordered, startling John out of listlessness. He’d been staring at the green light on the console. One little green light.

The doctor was gone before John had a chance to react. He tried to sit up, grunting at the effort, and the shaking sensation swept back in with head-to-toe trembling. His vision narrowed as a pulsing throb picked up its beat, and he might have fallen over had Beckett not suddenly returned and grabbed a hold of him.

“I know you knocked your head pretty hard, but I need you to focus,” Beckett said, squatting down so he was level with John.

“What?” He could hear the exhaustion and confusion in his voice, and couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he sounded that way. The small bubble of the cockpit window seemed to shrink, pressing in on him and he tensed his muscles.

He had to get out of here. Explosions. Crash landings. Burning moons. Danger. Had to get out…

“John!” Beckett was yelling, snapping his fingers in front of John’s face with one hand and holding his wrist with the other. “Don’t move. Do you understand?”

“Don’t move,” John repeated, the meaning of the words trailing along a moment later. Don’t move. As if he could. His entire body throbbed.

“Doctor Weir sent two more jumpers, they should be here any minute,” Lorne said, his head popping up into the cockpit. “How are you doing, sir?”

“Lorne?”

“He hit his head,” Beckett said. “Have you gotten Teyla out yet?”

“Not yet,” the major answered.

John let his eyes close, but the thought of Teyla stuck in storage kept sleep at bay as he waited for Lorne to say more about her.

“Teyla?” he prompted, when Lorne didn’t immediately respond.

“McKay’s examining the device now, trying to figure out how it works. He thinks it’s pretty straightforward, but he doesn’t want to rush things and make a mistake.”

“Rodney’s worried about making a mistake?” Beckett asked. And that really didn’t sound like McKay. Yet—

“It’s Teyla,” John said, his voice rough. He felt his throat tighten and he licked his lips. “Water?”

“Sorry, lad. Not right now.”

“Jumpers are here,” Lorne announced. John heard footsteps tapping against the ladder and moving away from him.

“Tell them to send that backboard immediately,” Beckett called out.

“Whoa, doc, I’m okay,” John mumbled. “Just a little shaken up. Think I hit my head.”

Beckett chuffed, patting him on the shoulder. John could hear the man digging around in his bag somewhere at his feet, and he hoped to God it was some kind of painkiller. He could almost feel the bruises growing, bleeding together to cover his entire body.

He opened his eyes only to cringe at the sight of the c-collar. He started to turn his head away from it then stopped short when the muscles in his neck screamed against the abuse. He sucked in a gasp, breathing heavily through his nose until the pain abated. Through it all, he was vaguely aware of Beckett grabbing his chin and holding him steady as he wrapped the collar around him.

Voices below indicated more people had arrived and John felt his attention zone. He looked over at the green bulb on the dash, satisfied that it was still lit. Outside, a scraggly looking bird circled the wrecked shuttle. Before he’d realized what was going on, Beckett had slid a backboard behind him and strapped him to it, and people were suddenly crowding around him, maneuvering him out of the chair and down the ladder.

Ronon appeared above him as he was settled onto a gurney, his dreadlocks falling across his face. One arm was resting in a sling but otherwise he seemed fine.

“Sheppard.”

“Hey,” John answered, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Landed. Didn’t die.”

“You did good.”

“Thanks, buddy. Is Teyla out yet?”

“Not yet. McKay’s gonna start beaming people out soon, but he said it could take close to a day to free everyone. He has no idea how to get Teyla first.”

“Let’s go, people,” Beckett ordered from somewhere off to John’s left. He appeared suddenly, blocking Ronon from view. “Just hang tight, John. We’ll have you back in Atlantis in no time.”

“I’m okay?”

He’d meant it as a statement, but his body was doing that trembling shaking thing again, and he shivered at the cold spreading over him. The cockpit had been warm in the sun.

“You’re going to be fine,” Beckett soothed, answering the inadvertent question. “I don’t think you’ve broken anything, but I want to play it safe. We’ll get you under a scanner, then give you some of those pain meds I know you need.”

The doctor checked him over again as he spoke, pressing into John’s stomach and chest and letting John know exactly where each and every bruise was located. John caught the man’s hand and pushed it away. Enough already. He was alive. Beckett didn’t need to keep reminding him of it.

He opened his eyes in time to catch the doctor scowling down at him—and dammit, why couldn’t he keep his eyes open? Someone draped a blanket over him, and then straps were pulled over his legs and chest, securing him to the gurney. Another hand slipped an oxygen mask over his face and he fought the urge to rip it off. As cool air brushed against his lips, he felt the muscles around his ribs relax slightly, and the aching in his chest eased.

“Teyla?” he asked no one in particular. He knew he’d asked before, but he couldn’t remember if he’d gotten an answer.

“Rodney’s working on it,” Beckett answered, and the ceiling overhead began to move. “I’d tell you not to worry about it, but how about we compromise and I’ll make Lorne promise to keep you updated. You’ll know as soon as everyone else when they get her out of the storage device.”

Like he could do anything else. The adrenaline was gone—there’d be no more moving for the next several hours, not under his own power anyway. “Fine,” he mumbled.

It would take them some time to get all those people out anyway, and then more time to get Teyla home. John squinted at the bright sunshine as the gurney suddenly emerged from the shuttle. A moment later, he was inside with Beckett next to him, patting his arm. John felt the jumper power up and take off. He felt his eyelids drawing closed and he let them slide shut, giving up the battle to stay awake. He’d gotten Teyla and the moon-base people to solid ground. Rodney and the others could take care of the rest.

END

* Many hours later, Teyla is finally freed from the storage device and returned to Atlantis. And cue the rest of the episode… ;-P


End file.
